The following content details the major features and enhancements added to Android Automotive in this release. To learn more about new features documented in this release, see What's New.
Major features and enhancements
System UI and core apps improvements
- Updated core system apps
- New Settings search. Users can now quickly search for the relevant setting from the Settings Home Screen.
- Media. Other features have been added for improved user experience, Customization enhancement for OEMs.
- Dialer. Option has been added to sort by last name for improved user experience.
- Messaging. Group Messages are now supported using MMS and RCS.
- Improved flexibility for notifications. Capability has been added for improved customizability for on-screen position for notifications panel and heads-up notifications, and for improved customizability for heads-up notification animations.
- Improved customizability for status bar icons. Spacing between icons can be customized, some icons can now be excluded.
- Automotive UI toolkit. A new set of components and resources have been added to allow for easier, more predictable, and more consistent OEM customization of the system.
- Baseline rotary support. VHAL events for a physical rotary controller are plumbed through to RotaryController service so that the apps can be made to work with the rotary controller.
User management
- Updated Multi-User APIs. Moved Android AutomotiveOS multi-user management API surface (for example, CarUserManagerHelper) into core framework (for example, UserManager) to make OEM integration and upgradability easier.
- User roles and restrictions. Support has been added for easier OEM customization of User roles and restrictions.
- Faster user switching. User switching and multi-user performance has been improved. User pre-creation and removing packages from system user is possible now.
- CarUserHAL. User management (for example, switch Users) integration between external ECUs and Android is now supported.
- Trusted device unlocking.Improvements have been made to unlocking performance of Users and system experience
Bluetooth
- Cover art. Cover art for currently playing and browsed tracks via AVRCP can now be received.
- MMS and RCS. Sending and receiving MMS and RCS messages are now supported in addition to SMS.
- Vendor AT commands. Capability has been added to support sending vendor AT commands over HFP to enable third-party projection.
- Synchronization of favorite contacts. Favorites phone book can now be transferred from phone to car.
- Improve support for multiple browsable media sources. Improved support for signals from phones supporting multiple media players, and changing of those media players.
- AVRCP improvements. Media control capability has been improved.
- Contact downloads.Contact downloads are now batched to get available contacts into the database sooner.
Multiple displays
- Emulator support. Android Automotive OS emulator now supports multiple physical displays.
- Boot animation for multiple displays.Multi display boot animation is now supported.
- CarActivityView. ActivityView is now aware of the driving restrictions.
Connectivity
- Hotspot client browsing and management. Partners can now view a detailed list of connected AP clients and display or block clients.
- Dynamic Wi-Fi interface management. Support has been added to create and remove Wi-Fi network interfaces dynamically to support Wi-Fi concurrency use cases and reduce fragmentation around current one-off implementations.
- Silent wireless connection to Automotive HUs. Privileged apps can now be silently connected to Wi-Fi.
Audio
- Audio effects per output device. Audio effects to specific output devices in addition to per-stream can be applied now.
- Multi-zone improvements. Multi-zone audio now supports routing based on user and car occupancy. Additionally, audio inputs can be associated with zones for easier device lookups.
- Supporting vehicle sounds. New system usages have been introduced to cover automotive use cases. Also, new APIs have been added to enable the HAL to participate in audio focus for sounds outside of Android.
- Audio focus improvements. Delayed audio focus requests are now supported, and a new user setting for preventing navigation from gaining focus during a call has been added.
Camera
Surround view. Capability has been added to display 360° surround view from multiple camera inputs.
Computer vision and machine learning (CV and ML)
Computepipe on Android Automotive OS. A CVML client implementation in Android now allows connecting with CVML pipelines regardless of which environment they are running in (VM or discrete HW) in a manner that abstracts the underlying deployment architecture.
Sensors
- Ultrasonics. Support for ultrasonic sensor arrays has been added to the platform.
- CarPropertyManager. Improvements have been made to permission granularity for the Vendor property, exposed error callback, and a simplified getProperty API.
- Country detector. Allow Automotive customization to enable OEMs to set a country code other than the default for location detection (specifically for cases in which there is no telephony provision in a car).
- GNSS. Unlimited satellite can now be reported (increased from the maximum of 64 previously supported.
System reliability and stability
Watchdog has been added to detect problematic process and restart it.
Boot performance
IO performance data is collected now as part of CarWatchDog service.
Car framework
- Optional and experimental features are now supported.
- The capability has been added for activity crash monitoring and restart for crashed activity running in a cluster (FixedActivity mode).
- Car service crash handling has been improved.
- CarOccupantZoneManager API has been added to allow querying the right display/audio for specific usage.
- CarInputManager has been added to enable the capturing of a selected group of input events.
- CAN bus HAL for standardized CAN bus access has been added.
Power management
Power management service logic now supports new transitions.
WAIT_FOR_VHAL_FINISH to WAIT_FOR_VHAL, and
SHUTDOWN_PREPARE to sleep immediately.
Bug fixes
Multiple bug fixes and compliance test fixes have been made.
Known issues
- xTS run on emulator and not on a compliant device.
- Performance benchmarking hasn't been performed.